(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - Witnesses say police used tear gas, water cannon and batons to disperse hundreds of stateless Arabs, protesting social discriminations and economic hardships targeting their community.
Private Al-Watan TV channel said its photographer, who was covering the protest, was also wounded. Most of those wounded sustained head injuries, witnesses said.
Police also chased protesters into the streets of Jahra and arrested many of them, including a 13-year-old boy, AFP quoted the independent Kuwait Association of Human Rights as saying on its Twitter account.
The protest rally came despite stern warnings from Kuwait's interior ministry against demonstrations and the promise by authorities to resolve their decades-old plight soon.
Stateless people, locally known as bidoons, have been holding demonstrations demanding Kuwaiti citizenship since February.
There are an estimated 100,000 bidoons currently living in oil-rich Kuwait. The majority of these bidoons live under dire economic conditions due to government restrictions.
While the bidoons claim to be Kuwaitis whose forefathers, who lived as Bedouins in the desert, failed to apply for citizenship when the state first introduced its nationality law in 1959, Kuwaiti authorities maintain these people are immigrants from neighboring countries, and refuse to grant them citizenship.
In 2000, Kuwait launched a crackdown on bidoons, depriving them of their essential rights, including health care, education and jobs, in a bid to force them to reveal what the authorities say are their true identities. They also cannot get birth, death and marriage certificates or passports.
The Kuwaiti government has recently announced that it is considering a plan to grant citizenship to stateless individuals who meet certain criteria.
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